Mammal films at Rotterdam festival

This video is called The Arctic Giant. It is the trailer of a film about bowhead whales.

At the Wildlife Film Festival in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, there will not only be films about birds, but also films about mammals. Like The Arctic Giant.

This video is called Dolphins purposely ‘getting high’ on pufferfish – Dolphins – Spy in the Pod: Episode 2 – BBC One.

The festival organisers write about this film:

Using revolutionary wildlife film-making techniques, 13 Spy Camera Creatures including ‘Spy Dolphin’, ‘Spy Nautilus’ and ‘Spy Turtle’ infiltrate the secret underwater world of dolphins. Swimming right alongside some of the most captivating animals on the planet, these new spies reveal spectacular moments from inside the pod.

In this extraordinary undersea voyage into the dolphin’s world, much of the behaviour has never been seen before. Seen through the camera eyes of the different Spy Creatures, this is dolphins up close and irresistible.

This video is the trailer of the film Wild Taiga. It shows wolves, brown bears, and other mammals in Finland and Belarus. Also birds, like pygmy owls.

This video is called Hunt for the Russian Tiger trailer.

The festival organisers write about this film:

Over five years of loneliness and danger one man waited to see a glimpse of Siberian tigers. Their intimate private lives had never been filmed before. Now biologist Chris Morgan reveals an amazing story of endurance in Russia’s wilderness as the first cameraman to record the tigers’ family life. This is the story of a man in search of one of the rarest of big cats.

This video is called Broken Tail trailer. The festival organisers write about this film:

Colin Stafford-Johnson spent almost 600 days filming Broken Tail and his family. Broken Tail was the most flamboyant tiger cub he’d ever seen in Ranthambhore, one of India’s premier wild tiger reserves.

Impossibly cute, he gamboled and posed for Colin’s camera through the first years of his life. But then without warning, Broken Tail abandoned his sanctuary and went on the run – surviving in hills, farmland & scrub until eventually he was killed by a train almost 200 kilometres from home. He was barely three years old.

Why did this young tiger leave Ranthambhore National Park, supposedly one of India’s best-protected tiger reserves? How could he possibly have survived in rural India for perhaps a year? What does his death reveal of the fate of the world’s last tigers? On a spectacular journey across Rajasthan, Colin travels by horseback retracing Broken Tail’s last journey, gathering clues as to his route and his behaviour, asking why he abandoned the park and above all – leading the search for the truth behind the future of the last wild tigers in India.

The story of a charismatic Irish cameraman on the trail of a lost tiger makes Broken Tail a compelling, poignant and important film.

This video is called BLOOD LIONS, OFFICIAL TRAILER 2015.

The festival organisers write about this film:

Breeding lions for slaughter in South Africa is big business. Over 1000 captive-bred, hand-reared lions were killed in the country last year, fueling a multimillion-dollar international industry.

Blood Lions follows acclaimed environmental journalist and safari operator Ian Michler, and Rick Swazey, an American hunter, on their journey to uncover the realities about predator breeding and canned lion hunting.

Michler investigates the breeding farms where lions are hand-reared to be sold to the hunting industry. We witness the results of battery farming that provide stark contrast to lives of wild lions.

Aggressive farmers resent Michler’s questions, but the highly profitable commercialisation of lions is plain to see – cub petting, volunteer recruitment, lion walking, hunting, and the new lion bone trade are all on the increase. It is a story that blows the lid off all the conservation claims made by the breeders and hunters in attempting to justify what they do.

This video is the film, also shown in Rotterdam, Pride. It says about itself:

13 September 2013

Pride looks into the cultural relationship between residents of Gujarat, India and the last remaining population of Asiatic lions in the world. With fewer than 50 lions living in the wild at the turn of the 20th century, rural communities started working with the government to create a haven for this top predator and are successfully securing this animal’s place in the ecosystem. Produced by Roshan Patel.

This video is called BBC Natural World | The Real Jungle Book Bear.

The festival organisers write about this film:

We all know him, we all love him: Baloo – Mowgli’s constant companion from The Jungle Book. Writer Rudyard Kipling and even more the Walt Disney movie made this clumsy fellow world famous.

The role models for Baloo are the Sloth Bears of India – surprisingly little is known about this secretive species. These in our days mostly nocturnal animals have never been portrayed in a natural history program before.

Over a period of three years Oliver Goetzl and Ivo Nörenberg not only were lucky enough to film these elusive creatures at daytime but got also behavior that was even not known to scientists so far – e.g. the mouth feeding of cubs by their mothers. Jungle Book Bear, a BBC film, is narrated by David Attenborough.

This video is called Pandas: The Journey Home Trailer.

The festival organisers write about this film:

This 3D family film will let you fall in love with this iconic, delightful creature and better understand the desperate plight of pandas in the wild. The filmmakers of National Geographic’s Pandas: The Journey Home were granted unprecedented access to the Wolong Panda Center in China to bring to light the extraordinary efforts of the Chinese to secure the panda’s future in the wild.

The film follows the center’s pandas at a significant milestone in their history. After decades of its captive breeding program, the center has hit its target number of 300 giant pandas and must now tackle the challenge of reintroducing breeding populations to the wild. The filmmakers were allowed to film the release of pandas bred in captivity and to follow a group of wild pandas in their mountain habitat.

Meet all of the pandas at the center as they get ready for their new lives, and learn about their fascinating habits as you chuckle at their hijinks. It turns out pandas are as much fun as they are cute, and they love getting the best of their keepers! Experience the dedication of the scientists who work tirelessly on behalf of this amazing animal. And follow one panda in particular, Tao Tao, as he is released into the bamboo forest to begin his adventure living in the wild.

This video is the film A Wild Dogs Tale.

The festival organisers write about this film:

In the heart of Botswana’s Okavango Delta an extraordinary lone African wild dog named Solo is creating a new pack for herself out of an unlikely alliance of hyenas and jackals. She sees this incredible team of predators as not just her hunting partners, but also as her family. She is even taking the lead in raising the offspring of her jackal companions by hunting and bringing back food for them, and by fighting off all threats. A Wild Dog’s Tale follows this true story, featuring amazing animal behaviour never seen before. This National Geographic film is truly amazing.

This video is called The Bat Man of Mexico: Trailer – Natural World – BBC Two

The festival organisers write about this film:

In this BBC film David Attenborough narrates the story of Rodrigo Medellin, Mexico’s very own ‘Bat Man’. Since he first kept vampire bats in his bathroom as a child, Rodrigo has dedicated his life to saving them.

Now Mexico’s most famous export product, tequila, is at stake. Rodrigo’s beloved lesser long-nosed bat is crucial to the liquor – pollinating the plants the drink is made from. To save both, Rodrigo must track the bats’ epic migration across Mexico – braving hurricanes, snakes, Mayan tombs and seas of cockroaches. The threats are very real not only for Rodrigo and the bats, but also for anyone with a taste for tequila.